The Jewish epigones of Narodnaia Volia yield the most compelling evidence of the outstanding role of Jews in the Russian revolutionary movement. Always prominently represented in its leading circles and organizations, they sustained the movement in its darkest hour and preserved its tradition for the new parties of opposition which arose in the 1890s. The fact that the arrests of the late eighties netted a disproportionally large number of Jews was an accurate reflection of their historic importance. It also confirmed the long-standing conviction of tsarist officials that the Jews were a particularly hardy and volatile element accounting for much of the political unrest of the two decades between 1870 and 1890. What the police official of the Third Department, M. M. Merkulov, had already voiced with grave concern in 1877 – namely, that the Jewish youth was an important potential source of recruits for the revolutionary movement – had become a stark reality ten years later.

Now, in 1887, it appeared to the authorities that the movement was kept alive, in spite of heavy losses, only because of the continuous supply of Jewish recruits, who, skilfully evading the police, constantly started up new pockets of revolutionary resistance. Venting his frustration over this phenomenon, the Moscow chief of police wrote in February 1887: ‘The very people who resist a transition to a peaceful program are the Jews who recently have been quietly attempting to grasp the initiative of the revolutionary movement in their hands.’ The same sentiment was expressed by General N. I. Shebeko in his comprehensive report of socialist subversion in Russia, 1878–87.